in our coffers
by 1848
Summary: Transported through time, our hypothetical gambler would have seen Prussia, Austria, Russia, and England as the great powers of the 1800s.


**circa 21st century**

"Asshole."

"Gilbert," Austria placed his mug with a light tap on the glass coffee table. Prussia shrugged, rubbing his feet together on the woven rug.

"It's not a bad thing. It's straggling the 'brilliant asshole' territory."

"Language is at the heart of a culture. It's not some neutral factor reserved for diplomats in chateaus. People get passionate over it. Knowing him, I wouldn't have expected better."

"What is it that bastard said? Something about language and... transcending the boundaries of a country? It's over twenty-five years after 1975, and the French are still getting used to finding other words for le meeting, le corner, and le hamburger. Why is he is so damn protective about keeping his French French? _Goddamn_, it's like if he had picked up some defunct trait of Germany's."

"History hasn't lent itself to-."

"Hm?"  
"The Atlantic Revolutions... The-"

"Shit, we were powerhouses back then."

A slight, mechanical chuckle. "With such ease, America aligns himself with the _British crown _after France sends his Marquis in, after France sends himself into debt."

Prussia was lying on the mohagony-resoned floor, "Those were the glory days."

**circa 1780s**

_"FUCK!" _

Prussia ducked as France thrust his coat and boots against the wall on the other side of the room, where a small pile of blood-stained clothing had accumulated.

"_Fucking SHIT! THAT FUCKING, CUNTING BASTARD CHILD!_"

"Fancy string of curses, you've got there, soldier."

France gave a savage stare in Prussia's direction who dismissed it with the tenacity of a disinterested psychiatrist. "I don't even have to be here. I don't even give a blow. Fuck you, for Silesia."

"_Fucker_. I helped him gain his shitty independence. And this is what he does -- he, HE ALLIES himself with that _ENGLISH WHORE_."

"In his defense, it's not like you cared genuinely about whatever the fuck he was going on about. Just sticking it to the British, again. And I mean, hello, they speak the same language. Language means social cohesion, language means manipulation into delusions of nationalism, language means, 'We're English, not French'." Mockingly broad-back shrugs. "I would rather ally with Austria than that gutteral Russian. At least we're German. Sortof."

"_Fucking_ England. _Fucking piece of_-"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but throughout the whole gig, he was insisting he was a little English bitch."

"_Fucking_ little-"

"Benedict Arnold?" Prussia offered.

France kicked the leg of the wooden table that, over forty years ago, had been decorated with their sprawled maps, plume feathers, pomp and circumstance, and dirty, gritty fingers.

"The debt is _fucking_ choking."

"We're _all_ in debt. We all turn our tide to whoever puts subsidies in our coffers," Prussia suggested.

"_Fucking_ _whores_."

**circa 1762**

"What a piece of work is this. A theatre of colonial and continental warfare," England remarks, standing stark between Prussia and the sun's golden fire.

Prussia is splattered with tarnished vermillion and copper rust, an agglomeration of hemoglobin and gunpowder and mud and bone; the color of casualities dulls by the lusty glint in his cardinal eyes (and England thinks for a moment that it's not unlike the cardinals of Rome, set against white marble vestiges, tombs of edifices). He's not sure if the taste in the wall of his mouth is that of musty, earthy dirt or pungent blood. "I don't give a damn about the colonies."

"It doesn't matter. I'm backing you, anyways. Finanically, I suppose. You'll do the fighting - here, at least. It is a German conflict. My troops are heading to the colonies."

Prussia cranes his neck to glance at England with a nasty smirk, "So, I'm the bitch that's going to distract the French?"

England smiles. And Prussia has half a mind to let his aspersions out until England turns to face him with a solid, rigid piercing eye and a fixed jaw. "I'm going to win America on the plains of Germany."

**circa 1740**

"Brandenburg."

Unsettling red eyes address Austria's collars. Austria thinks this young boy with such fair, moody complexion and sun-brazened, windswept, rough hair is pretty but unfortunate. What a piece of work he is. What, with his poor, dull sense of respect.

"House of the Hapsburgs," he moves his delicate lips harshly, and Austria thinks he can feel that young tongue flick against the back of his teeth and roof of his mouth. He's honest, he's firm -- how can he not be true? How can he not be honest? He's flesh and blood. There's wind and rain and sun, and he's been there and here. But nevermind this, this boy has tipped the scale of continental provisions and upset the balance of powers.

"I _am_ the leading power of the Holy Roman Empire," Austria spits.

"Austria is simply another German state," Prussia tucks a lock of silver hair behind his ear. "I'm keeping Silesia, by the way."

"He uses you," Prussia says, hands enveloping hers. "But the moment he's strong and secure, he'll ignore his promises. It's at his weakest trials that he offers and upholds his concessions. He has no sense of political dignity, and he has no plans to abide by them."

Her calloused, familiar fingers pry themselves from his grip.

"And you think I'm only doing this for political meanderings?"

**circa 1744**

"Austria and I, we're old enemies," France tells Prussia over the maps. The room is fretted with the wick's golden fire.

"You and England are old enemies. It's like a rite of passage. Maybe we'll be old enemies one day." Prussia takes one of France's hands.

"England's scrabbling with Spain over commercial supremacy. He wants the Low Countries in friendly Austrian hands, not mine." France rests the cheek of his face along the nape of Prussia's neck.

"This is all about wealth to you," Prussia says absently, tracing his own fingers along long, gallic lines of France's palm.

"Wealth and power. Or as we like to say, wealth is power," France closes his hand around Prussia's lingering fingers.

"So, we're whores. Let's back Spain." He pries his fingers from France's grip.

**circa 1756**

"Austria. Russia. _France_," Prussia says, tapping his fingers on the table. "Prevent them, anyone, from entering the Germanies. I don't want them near him. _He's_ mine."

England's hands are poised together, in front of his lips, "I've been Austria's ally since-"

"Since Louis XIV's wars, I know. The point is, the brevity of it all is - is, we're against France."

"We've been following the same foreign policy since the sixteenth century," Austria says, and France can detect the lilt of amusement in his tone. "How _sorely _ironic that now you'll fight to_ restore _Austrian supremacy."

"I'm not fighting to bolster you. I'm fighting to _destroy_ Prussia."

"United in our hate."

France pauses, his fingers tapping the table, "You can call it hate."

**circa 1790s**

"I think he's gone nuts," Prussia says. "The other day, he was espousing Enlightenment ideals. _True_ Enlightenment ideals, not that sorry despotism we have."

"How romantic," Austria quips. "They're _citizens_ of the _nation_, not servants of the king."

"Forget that bullshit. Remember his '_l'etat c'est moi'_? He's the fucking birthplace of absolutism, where the king is the nation. What's wrong with him?"

"Louis XIV was a much more competent king than Louis XVI."

"It's not like he's evil. If anything, it's that _Austrian _whore of his."

"No, not an evil person, but a mediocre one. And in a monarch, mediocrity is unfortunately often a greater fault than vice."

"And we're going to have to fight him with that darling Russian, too," Prussia bites the peeling skin at the corner of his thumb.

"You should be thankful. If it wasn't for Russia's admiration towards you back in '62, I'm not sure how you would've fared."

"We don't have anything in common. At least you and I, I don't know, were once part of the same empire."

"You and him have a lot in common. You partitioned Poland together," Austria shrugs. "Besides, Catherine III is German."

Prussia gave him a disinterested look.

"How international and universal a struggle like that is. They know they're protecting their _country_, their _nation_. You've seen what nationalism, pure fanaticism, does. Remember the Hundred Year's War?" Austria continues.

"No." Prussia lies on the floor, staring at ceiling. Austria reminds himself what a gorgeous, silly thing Prussia is.

"Jeanne d'Arc, a peasant girl, is able to goad and infatuate all of France into winning. Over the English throne."

"Pft. No one really won the Hundred Year's War. And I'm not saying this in some 'no one really wins wars' pacifist stint. The French victory in the Hundred Year's War was a moderate victory _at best_. Besides, you think some Parisian militia headed by a Marquis - I mean Citizen - is going to beat me? Honey, I'm the motherfucking Prussian Kingdom."


End file.
